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(1837 - 1905)
Home State: South Carolina
Education: South Carolina Military Academy (Citadel), Class of 1857
Command Billet: Battery Commander
Branch of Service: Artillery
Unit: Washington (SC) Battery
Before Sharpsburg
He was a teacher in the Union District, then studied the law, was admitted to the bar in May 1860, and opened a practice in Union. He had been with the Washington Artillery before the war, and was at Charleston with them on State service in December 1860.
He enrolled for Confederate service in June 1861 as First Lieutenant, Company A of the Hampton Legion Artillery Battalion. He was promoted to Captain when Captain Stephen Dill Lee was promoted to Major in November 1861 and the battery was supplied with 4 Blakely rifles at that time. He was re-elected Captain at the reorganization of April 1862. He remained in command when the Battery was detached from the Legion for independent service as horse artillery in Pelham's Battalion in July.
On the Campaign
He commanded the battery in Maryland in engagements on the Monocacy River (12 September), at Braddock's Gap on Catoctin Mountain (13th), on South Mountain (14th) and, largely in reserve, at Sharpsburg (17th).
The rest of the War
He was wounded in the leg at Burgess Mill (Boydton Plank Road) near Petersburg, VA on 27 October 1864. His leg was amputated and he retired from field service, but he was appointed Major to date from 18 February 1865.
After the War
He was a teacher, then, by about 1868, a lawyer in Yorkville, SC. He was elected to a term in the state legislature in 1882.
References & notes
His service from the Roll,1 his own Record of Hart's Battery (pub. 1912), and Louis Sherfersee's History of Hart's Battery in the Confederate Veteran of November 1901. Personal details from family genealogists. His gravesite is on Findagrave.
He married Margaret Jane "Jennie" Ratchford (1843-1883) in October 1863 and they had 7 children.
More on the Web
Hart's sketch of the battery history is from Stories of the Confederacy (1876), online from the University of South Carolina Libraries.
An excellent photograph of Hart and other members of the Battery at an 1896 reunion, now in the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, is online from David Evans on Great Pee Dee.
Birth
02/13/1837; Union District, SC
Death
04/20/1905; Yorkville, SC; burial in Rose Hill Cemetery, York, SC
1 Thomas, John P., and and previous SC Historians of the Confederate Records, Confederate Rolls of South Carolina, Columbia: Historian of Confederate Records, 1898, Roll of Washington Art'y, Hampton Legion - Hart's Battery [AotW citation 21107]